Tag Archives: writing

If you are blogging for a brand, personal or that of your company, here are my tips to get you going:

You will need to build an image in the virtual world that resonates with your target audience. If you are trying to woo today’s readers, let me tell they are extremely tech-savvy people, and mundane simplistic content doesn’t impress them.

Find your niche knowledge area and you can devote your writing on trending topics about your knowledge or expertise areas. Your emphasis can be setting a tone that you understand technology and is ready to share our proficiency to help your readers benefit.

Your business-related inputs need to be in tune with the time, and may include discussions about changing trends in HR, best practices in marketing, topics which may be discovered in Google news, or Twitter. You can write your opinion on any newsworthy item, with proper acknowledgement given to the original news source.

Go for a content calendar, if that makes you more organised in your blog posts. The content calendar is fine, but cannot be sacrosanct. It needs to remain dynamic to cash in on the breaking or most talked about news pieces in your domain.

You will be needing to use very good pictures, so must have access to great images. Paying for a good image site may be a good idea. Alternately, search for images especially marked for reuse or are under creative commons license.

Credentials of the author is important. Make sure you offer some good pieces to work with. Bad English, poor quality of work, or lack of knowledge in the bloggers will hurt our brand.

At the end of the day, as an avid blogger, I believe in using blogging to build an image, rather than only use it for marketing. Having a content strategy in place may help.

There exists, for everyone, a sentence – a series of words – that has the power to destroy you. Another sentence exists, another series of words, that could heal you. – Philip K. Dick

If you are a writer, then you must have thought at least once, to change the world through your writing. Okay, not once, but many times, may be? We writers are dreamers and we love to dream of changing the world order through our writing. Haven’t we grown up hearing, pen is mightier than sword? But is it? Really?

I am of the opinion, that yes, it is. Well, in this day, I can perhaps modify it to include the keyboard of the laptop as well. But the essence remains the same, words are powerful. Words can build of break things, people, or change course of history. You don’t believe me? Egyptian Revolution of 2011 gained momentum with Wael Ghonim starting a Facebook page called “We Are All Khaled Said.” Protesting against police atrocities on common people, including 28-year old Khaled Mohamed Said, who was killed by police, the page has more than 250,000 likes.

If you look around, there had been many such instances of words changing the course of events. Remember Anna Hazare and how his movement gained ground? It’s because you and me, we wrote about it. Today, it doesn’t matter if you are a blogger, or a full-fledged writer. So long as you lend your words to a cause, so long as you strike a chord with your audience, you have the power. Coming from the land of Bengal, since childhood we have been told about the power of words and how our history has been shaped by it. We are always reminded of Rabindranath Tagore, and Bankimchandra, people who wrote India’s national anthem and song. If that’s not power of words, then I don’t know what it is.

So next time you stare at a blank page, waiting for an inspiration to hit you for your newest blog post, think social, think change. Donate a thought and watch it influence people. Never underestimate the power of words in changing a society. May be the society is waiting for you? What do you say?